Big 12 generates over $300 million in revenue in 2016

In a new report from USA Today released on Wednesday, the Big 12 passed the $300 million mark in revenue for fiscal year ending June 30th, 2016.

This gives the Big 12 two straight years of revenue increases of more than $40 million.

A big reason for the increases in revenue is because of the quality bowl games the conference members got to during that fiscal year. Remember this is June 2015-June 2016, so during that time period, Oklahoma made the College Football Playoff and Oklahoma State reached a New Years Six bowl game (Sugar Bowl). The Big 12 pulled in $114.5 million in bowl revenue in 2016, which was just $74.5 million in 2015.

As for the revenue shares for the respective universities, each program was in the range of $28 million to West Virginia to $28.9 million for Oklahoma. This was the first time West Virginia and TCU were eligible to receive their full conference revenue shares as Big 12 members.

As for how the conference stacks up against the other Power 5 conferences, the SEC is still king, while everyone else plays for second place. The SEC announced a revenue of $584.2 million for the 2015-2016 fiscal year, with each SEC member receiving a revenue share of $40.4 million. The SEC and Big 12 are the only conference revenue numbers currently on record for the 2015-2016 fiscal year, and according to multiple reports, the Big Ten will likely come in second place in average revenues paid to each member, with the ACC likely to come in front of the Big 12 and the Pac-12 to be toward the bottom of the pack.

Also, there was a slight bump in pay for Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby, who made a solid $2.6 million in 2015, which is a $70,000 raise from the previous year.